looking for an answer - antidepressants

[Guest guest]

Sat nam,

 

Seva Simran said: People tell him antidepressants cause them to lose

touch with their essence.

 

Beautifully said.

 

It has become a generally accepted dogma that if you are depressed or

anxious, restless or unfocused you have a chemical imbalance in your

brain. In other words, that the source of your psychological state is

that certain substances (neurochemicals) in your brain are out of

whack. Tinkering with the balance of these substances by taking

psychoactive medication (eg. Paxil, Prozac, Adderal, Risperdal,

Effexor, Busmar, Wellbutrin, Ritalin, etc.) is said to be like "taking

insulin for diabetes" and will surely set you on the road to mental

health. This dogma is called the biological or biochemical approach to

"mental illness."

 

Some thoughts about the biological approach.

 

First of all, there is no scientific evidence that human emotions or

behavior are governed by neurochemicals. At the end I will refer you

to several excellent, well-documented books which prove scientifically

that the biological theory is based on a false premise. No

psychiatrist or scientist has ever challenged the evidence in these

books. Instead, the biochemical dogma is advanced by anecdote, and

popularized by articles written in magazines like Time and Newsweek.

Why provide scientific evidence when you can have celebrities speak on

TV and write books about how one little pill changed their life? Why

do we never see the alternate point of view put forward, the

non-biological explanation? Because that is the very nature of dogma -

it does not allow for any other opinion. It does not relish debate.

 

Someone asked about the "Prozac conspiracy". Well maybe it is just

coincidence - but the biological approach arose at a time when Managed

Care was emerging as a force in health care policy generally. It was

favorably received becasue it allowed the psychiatrist to spend 15

minutes dispensing a prescription rather than the longer time required

by therapeutic methods. The pill-based theory is obviously a boon for

the pharmaceutical industry; psychoactive products are typically the

best-sellers of the drug companies, generating billions of dollars of

sales annually. That's billions.

 

Seva also discussed side effects. Most doctors tell their patients,

"You might have a dry mouth, maybe some constipation." At the end I

refer you to just a few of the web sites which document severe side

effects, including death, that your doctor probably did not mention. A

drug company lists a side effect as "rare' if it is experienced by 1

or 2 % of the people taking the drug. Since these products are usually

"blockbusters" , which are drugs selling over a million, let's say

Prozac sells twenty million one year to take a figure. 2% of 20

million is 400 thousand people!

 

After all, the pill is made to affect your brain. Think about how

wonderful and delicate the brain is. Think about how complicated it is

and how little we know about how it works. Truly we know next to

nothing about how our marvelous brains work.

 

Even less about the mind.

What is the connection between the mind and the brain? This question

has tantalized philosphers for ages. The proponents of the biological

theory conveniently skip over this question and focus on the physical

organ, the brain. True, modern medicine with its technological

advances, can locate a molecule of serotonin and trace its path in the

brain.

But to leap from that to saying that they can relate that molecule to

a mental, emotional, psychological condition is appallingly bad

science and just plain untrue.

It's like saying that the electrical components of a television set

determine the quality of programming!

 

In fact, psychic pain is a result of conditions in our life: maybe we

had bad parenting, or loss, or disappointment. Maybe we feel that life

lacks meaning, maybe we don't feel connected to other people, maybe we

can't find our place in the cosmic order. There are probably thousands

of factors. Sometimes life is sad, demanding, difficult; sometimes

it's so painful a person doesn't want to live. Life is complicated.

The biological theory offers a simplistic answer to complicated

questions.

 

....And we haven't even talked about soul and spirit!

Can we find Soul under a molecular microscope? Can we locate Spirit

along the dentrite of a neuron?

 

The biological approach to mental distress is reductionism and

biological determinism at their worst. It reflects back to Descarte

who reduced the world to the "sum of its parts", and thus disappeared

the enchantment, the magic, the mystery, the miracle of the world.

When patients told Seva they lost their essence, I believe this is the

true horror of these treatments- they assault what makes us human.

They target our uniqueness, they target the place where meaning resides.

 

Further, taking a pill reinforces the idea that we are alone in this

world.Here it is - me and the psychiatrist. Many times the roots of

psychic pain are in the community, not in the individual. We all know

about the cultural isolation, rootlessness, alientation many of us

live in today, as opposed to even one generation ago. The media tells

us to seek meaning in a new Lexus. Taking a pill means we will not

look for the source of our pain - perhaps the source is our

relationships, or lack of, in lack of connection to something bigger

than us. Taking a pill makes it unlikely that we will ask that most

human of questions - what is my purpose?

 

 

****If you are considering taking yourself off of psychoactive drugs

please get support and help from a knowledgable practitioner.

----

Following are some books and web sites that challenge the dogma of

biological determinism.

web sites

http:// www.breggin.com- Highly recommended web site of Dr. Peter

Breggin, one of the earliest to question the prevailing 'wisdom' and

still a highly-documented and up- to-date resource.

 

http://www.wildestcolts.com/ - excellent site by author John Breeding.

In his words: " a challenge to the biomedical mental health industry".

 

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p961242.html - This is an article by

David Kaiser, "Against Biologic Psychiatry" - recommended for its

information and viewpoint.

 

http://www.prozactruth.com and

http://www.antipsychiatry.com

- I do not have any experience with these web sites; they appear to

have comprehensive information about many psychoactive drugs,

including side effects.

 

books

Any book by Peter Breggin is also recommended, especially Toxic

Psychiatry (1991) and Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to

Stop Taking Psychiatric Drugs (1999-co-author David Cohen)

 

Joseph Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash: overcoming the dangers of prozac,

zoloft, paxil, and other antidepressants with safe, effective alternatives

 

David Healy, The Antidepressant Era

 

Valenstein, Elliot, Blaming the Brain [This is the book that got me

started on this path and changed my life. Written in 1989, a great

history and explanation of the biologic approach.]

 

by Ellen/Kartar Kaur